


Trying to Decipher What Feels Like Braille Upon My Skin

by Nevcolleil



Category: Angel: the Series, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:22:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28419822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: John sees him at the back of the bar and has to look twice before he realizes that he knows that face. That young man has changed. And he has a new scar, curled around his neck like a gnarled finger, that nearly makes John stumble when he gets close enough to see it.
Relationships: John Winchester/Wesley Wyndham-Pryce
Kudos: 1





	Trying to Decipher What Feels Like Braille Upon My Skin

John sees him at the back of the bar and has to look twice before he realizes that he knows that face.

They met in Tulsa. Each working a different job. The face was smoother then – younger in a way that has nothing to do with years. Now there are dark circles under icy blue eyes, lines where there was only smooth skin. There’s about a week’s worth of stubble shadowing a jaw that didn’t seem so hard-edged beneath John’s fingertips.

John has to think. That young man has changed. And changes speak of trouble – of hardships. Of complications John has fought as hard to keep out of his sons’ lives as he has fought to protect them from the evil that complicates things.

John doesn’t need more trouble. And hardships are a dime a dozen in a hunter’s life. But while he tells himself it’s best not to get involved – even enough just to walk over there and prove that he’s not seeing things – John is already ordering two of whatever Wes is having, asking the bartender to send them over to the back table.

John wanted to protect Wes once, too. Wes would have nothing of it, but John can’t walk away now without at least gauging the damage. Wes is only a few years older than John’s eldest son – Dean. And he has a new scar, curled around his neck like a gnarled finger, that nearly makes John stumble when he gets close enough to see it.

“Didn’t take you for the tequila type,” he says in the way of a greeting when he’s standing over Wes’s table.

Yeah. Changes. Wes doesn’t even move like he did in Tulsa – too much anxiety and energy in one lanky body to lend him a grace equal to his skill. Wes in Tulsa turned as if startled when John first spoke to him. Fluttered those ridiculous lashes like he was trying to blink John out of his vision.

Wes now merely tilts his chin until their eyes meet and Wes doesn’t blink once – his gaze is as still and closed shut as the rest of him.

His lips twist – without a hint of teeth – and something John supposes is a smile forms the words, “I’m not a slay-the-nest-while-you’re-sloshed type either. And it’s early.”

It’s as good an acknowledgement of recognition as John thinks he’s going to get. There’s nothing else in Wes’s gaze that says they even know each other. If Wes is surprised to see John again… he isn’t showing it.

John takes a seat across the table as the barkeep arrives, setting two dark bottles between them and walking away. “There was a nest of kar-tek demons in the warehouse district. Nabbing kids on that side of the city. I just came from there.” It was sort of a messy job. Enough that John almost regretted not bringing Dean along. But one of them needed to be in Las Cruces, and he lives to tell the tale, so things worked out okay.

Wes raises a brow – at last a familiar gesture - and something glints in his eyes for just a second. John can’t say what it is, but it could be anger, and the look is so momentarily sharp, John wonders what it’d be like if Wes’s eyes weren’t dull with alcohol and some strange numbness.

“Ah. Well then. I suppose I have time to graduate to something more bracing.”

John can’t imagine what would be more “bracing” than the turpentine they’re drinking – he takes the first quick swig from his bottle and nearly gags on the flavor. Wes has a small collection of identical bottles sitting in front of him.

Wes puts back double what John did, easy, and doesn’t flinch – and if this is what Wes was doing before he decided to drink himself under the table, John can’t decide whether he did the right thing coming over. On the one hand, Wes obviously needs saving from himself.

On the other, John isn’t always good at saving people from themselves. And the last time he tried with Wes, they hadn’t done anything you could technically call salvation. Even if a few, key moments had felt damn well close.

“There something you gotta brace for?” John asks after a moment, taking a more manageable sip.

The brow lifts again. Wes looks at him, head on, and John was mistaken – there’s nothing familiar there.

“Isn’t there always?” Wes says. And his voice tightens at just the right places for John to put two and two together – the scar and the rasp – about why Wes doesn’t sound like himself either.

John came to this pub to forget hunting for an hour – it isn’t the kind of dive hunters usually frequent. But it’s there – sitting on the other side of the table – staring John blankly in the face.

It’s as stupid an idea as it was the last time – stupider - but John is already rising as he sets down his bottle and says, “I’m getting out of here.”

Wes doesn’t respond. Doesn’t look like he’s even considering it.

“You coming with?” John asks.

Wes stares at him. And then replies, as though John had asked for the time, with a simple, “Yes.”

This isn’t different. It’s still John leading the way into a motel room he’d purchased with a fake name. And it’s still Wes quietly closing the door, then standing there doing nothing. Like there ought to be a cue to tell him what needs doing.

Only new thing is, Wes in Tulsa’s quiet wasn’t so… disquieting. He was nervous. Skittish, maybe. Which hadn’t helped John feel less guilty - taking this kid back to his room when he felt like he should be taking a flat palm to the back of his head. Telling him to get out while he still could. If that point had ever really existed for Wes – looking back John really can’t tell. He pulled Wes to him for that first, teeth-clacking kiss as much to quiet his own mind as to taste the quivering of Wes’s lips. To feed the hunger that had grown in him from the moment Wes had pulled a crossbow off the back of his bike and threatened to shoot John with it.

Wes now isn’t anxious – he’s expectant. John would say he was amused if he hadn’t seen amused on Wes and known it looked so different. This time, when John tosses his keys on the dresser and strides across the room, it’s not a nagging voice at the back of his mind that curls his fingers around the nape of Wes’s neck. It’s the absence of Wes’s voice, stuttering nonsense and nothing into the stillness with the first brush of skin on skin. Making him think of Then and Now like they matter – like he’d had something to do with the way one led to the other – and it isn’t really like that.

It wasn’t like that - it was just two men. Two jobs that somehow bled into one - a bottle of Jack Daniels and a lot of lonely nights. Followed by the opportunity for something else, too good to pass up.

It was those eyelashes. Those eyes. Wes’s hands, poised to pull the trigger. Wes’s throat, arched as John pressed his lips to the skin there, the way he is now…

This is not different. For all Wes has changed, he still makes that same sound when John uses his teeth. His breath trembles even if his hands don’t, and if John was just curious – part interested, part nostalgic – before, he’s hardening quickly now, a soft growl rising at the back of his throat.

He wraps his fingers around Wes’s biceps, and the kid was pretty well stream-lined the last time. At least the years have been good to him in that respect – lean muscle is just as lean, but there’s more of it. John squeezes until there’s bound to be finger-shaped bruises on Wes’s arms in the morning, and the combination of hard in his hands and soft (in the moan that whispers past Wes’s lips) in his ears makes John hungry for more.

“When’s the last time you did this?” John asks, pushing Wes not-too-gently onto the bed – as much because he needs to know as because the sight of Wes laid back and waiting is like holy water to his self-control. There’s a burn in the effort to take it slow.

John’s hands are parting the layers of Wes’s clothes even as he speaks – slipping inside the open leather coat and traveling the flat expanse of Wes’s abdomen and chest. His fingers go to work on Wes’s shirt buttons as he settles his weight on top of Wes, half-crouching over him at the edge of the bed. Wes slides his own hands up John’s back.

“Does it matter?”

John hates to think it, but the rasp makes Wes’s voice even sexier than it was before, with that damned choirboy British accent - and John’s voice is gruff as he tastes the first bit of Wes’s skin he can expose – fingers that move like blinks on a trigger operating way too slow on Wes’s clothes.

“It does if you don’t have anything on you,” John grunts. He has a condom at the bottom of his bag but nothing else – he doesn’t have much need for either. John doesn’t do… this often. And he can count on one hand the number of men he’s done it with.

More skin reveals itself and John sucks at what he can get to, leaving damp red patches like marks on a map as he moves down to Wes’s navel, up and over to a nipple. Goddamn, but the boy still shivers when you lick him, and John presses his weight down on Wes more fully, bringing their hips together.

The contact packs a punch. John rocks with it, keeping up the friction.

At first, Wes follows suit – rubs up against him as John thrusts down, hands traveling to all the places on John’s body John’s hands have traveled on his. His long fingers curl in John’s chest hair and pinch at his nipples and it had been good last time. But this is more than John was expecting.

Then Wes flips him. Hell if he knows how. They were lying with their legs all tangled, John’s weight balanced on his hips and his elbows, bent at each side of Wes’s head, and Wes used the awkward position to his advantage. Next moment, John’s lying in the spot beside the one he’d had Wes pinned in, and Wes is leaning over him, shirt and coat both open now, eyes alive for the first time all evening.

Wes reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a foil packet – he drops it near the end of the bed – but no lube. “No. It really doesn’t,” he says, when John’s all but forgotten the topic of conversation. John opens his mouth, maybe to argue, but Wes sticks his tongue in it and John decides to let him make that decision.

One thing that’s stayed with John, after all this time – besides the eyes, the stuttering – is Wes’s hands. Wes knows how to use them. He rubs and strokes, reminding John of this, and unlatches John’s belt buckle just when John’s about to break away and do it himself.

“Jesus,” he says when Wes wraps his fingers around him with one hand and lowers his zipper with the other. Wes squeezes and John says it again, more like a hiss – and if he’d used any other word, John wouldn’t blame Wes for thinking the sound had come from a demon.

“It’s been months,” Wes says calmly, barely audible over the blood rushing in John’s ears as that hand strokes.

“What-“ Wes kisses him. And John takes that as a request to shut up.

“A one-night stand, I guess you could say,” Wes continues. “I seem to be good at those.”

Leave it to Wes. John had waited, as he sat at Wes’s table, for the walls to come down and the Wes he remembered to show through. He’d wondered if that cold, blank face went all the way down – or if it was just another callus, like the ones that roughened Wes’s once-smooth hands.

John’s more relieved than he cares to admit that he’s been proven right.

But Wes’s timing – frankly – sucks.

“Wes-”

Wes takes the waist of John’s boxers and jeans and tugs them down John’s hips far enough for the head of his cock to jut out. Then he leans down and licks the head. Hard.

“Goddamn,” John groans. Wes has that same strange glint in his eyes.

“I’m not as good at repeat performances,” he says, making his own kind of sense. “Not that the opportunity presents itself when your partner tries to kill you and gets himself dumped in an ocean.”

John doesn’t know how to respond. The occasional lick is melting his brain. “And for an agnostic…” Wes continues, “you do realize that you speak to Him quite a bit.” Then he sucks John down – doesn’t lift John’s cock and place it in his mouth – just wraps his lips around John and pulls him in with lips and tongue and suction alone.

John grips the back of Wes’s neck with one hand and scratches at the motel bed comforter beneath them with the other. “Shit, that’s good.”

Wes hums an assent and the sound goes straight through John’s cock.

That starts the stop of it right there. Wes takes John down one, two… three times. It feels phenomenal. John could let himself go in it but that’s not how he wants this to end.

The hand at the back of Wes’s head tangles in his hair and tugs gently. John pushes Wes backwards til they’re both sitting, pulling Wes out of his coat and shirt as quickly as he can without doing damage, mouth latched to Wes’s the whole time. He only breaks away to stand, kicking off his boots, dropping his jeans and shorts.

He takes Wes’s face in his hands – he doesn’t know if Wes will go for that anymore, but John wants to feel the roughness of stubble and scar tissue beneath his touch. He kisses Wes til his breath becomes choppy.

“I wanna fuck you.” Simple and to the point – John knows Wes’ll go for that. And the curve of Wes’s lips, the look in his eyes, say John isn’t wrong.

Wes unfastens his own jeans and John helps him remove them and his boots, crawling to the center of the bed with Wes as soon as there’s nothing else between them.

John wants to argue again, when he starts to prepare Wes and spit’s the only thing available. But Wes doesn’t seem to mind. He presses against John’s fingers before John is ready, and the feel of Wes closing around even that part of him, warm and tight, has John shaking by the time Wes pulls him down on top of him.

“Now,” Wes says. John isn’t expecting the level of command in Wes’s tone, which makes it all the more effective.

“Are you s-”

Wes spits in his own hand and grabs John’s cock. John hisses, “Oh. God.”

“Now, John. Please.”

John can’t say no. He grips the back of Wes’s thighs, spreading Wes’s legs open and folding them back. He sheaths and slicks himself as well as he can and begins to ease in carefully.

When Wes gets impatient he rocks his hips back, helping John along.

John drops his head to Wes’s shoulder with a groan. “Damn, Wes, you’re gonna kill me.”

“Hmm.” Wes bites at the lobe of John’s ear. “I’m not the one who won’t move.” He rocks his hips again.

John grabs them and holds Wes still. “I’m not gonna hurt you, Wes. We can take it slow.”

Wes bucks against John’s hands, hands tangled in John’s hair, dragging his head down until their mouths meet in a damned hard kiss. “I don’t want slow,” Wes almost growls the words. “I want you.”

Wes’s hands fist in John’s hair and he pulls John’s head back. John puffs out a startled breath... Then sucks it back in when Wes’s teeth press into the curve of his shoulder and neck.

Fuck.

“You asked for it?” John breathes, shaking out of Wes’s grip and licking a short line along the curve of Wes’s collarbone. “You got it, Wes.”

Wes shivers, “Ye-” …and then cries out as John thrusts, hard and fast.

Then John thrusts again.

And again. Until he’s buried inside, pausing as much to let Wes adjust as to catch his own breath.

“Goddamn you, don’t stop,” Wes writhes. John shifts his hands back to Wes’s thighs, gripping tight.

“Alright… Alright.” And then there aren’t any words. Just sharp grunts and short breaths and stuttering moans. And John, at last, wrapping his fingers around Wes one more time, making long, firm strokes and enjoying the feel of Wes, warm, hard and leaking in his hand.

John feels it in his knees, in his fingertips, when he’s about to come. Wes is arching beneath him and there are the half-whispered stutters, the fluttering lashes. There’s Wes with open eyes, muscles clenched tight beneath John’s hands, around John’s cock. And John thinks maybe he blacks out a moment, because the next moment his hand is warm and wet and Wes is shuddering through the very end of his climax and John’s hits him with the force of a howler demon.

He muffles a gruff cry in Wes’s shoulder, tasting sweat and skin and Wes on his parted lips.

The morning after in Tulsa had come that same night.

John had hardly caught his breath when Wesley turned to him with blue eyes wide and nervous. John only closed his own eyes and breathed deep. He never knew what to say just after… and it was a little bit ridiculous. He hadn’t been a virgin when he’d married Mary and ten years after her death he’d stopped being abstinent.

When John finally opened his eyes he told Wes he could have the shower first and planted a last kiss on his lips. Then he slipped out while the water was running, leaving a note and everything he’d found on the demon Wes was tailing on the motel room’s kitchenette counter.

John’s not sure what’s changed as he lies beside Wes, watching the streetlights streak the back wall. They’re silent, but somehow the silence isn’t awkward, and John can’t feel Wes’s eyes on him, asking questions John couldn’t quite make out much less answer.

John finally gives and turns first and finds out why – Wes is fast asleep. Alcohol and God knows how many sleepless hunts (John knows that weariness that weighted Wes’s steps and slurred his words, last night, just as surely as the tequila) knocking him out cold.

And the sex, of course. John figures that helped some.

John stares at Wes a little while, til his eyes focus on his bag, lying open on the opposite bed – John never gets a single.

John rises and cleans up in the bathroom, pulls on his shorts and jeans and lays salt lines around the door and windows. Wonders if Wes picked up the habit – he hadn’t seemed too impressed when John had shown him the trick in Tulsa.

John pulls the comforter off the other bed and throws it over Wes before crawling under it with him.

Maybe he’s pulled too many all-nighters himself, or maybe he’s getting old. But he doesn’t mind having another warm body in the bed and can’t really think of a reason why he ought to leave it.

He dozes off facing the door, Wes’s breath warm against the back of his neck, and says the last protection spell almost as an afterthought.

John thinks he can feel Wes mouth the words in his sleep, lips brushing lightly against John’s skin.


End file.
